"Never give up, never surrender, give me freedom or give me death." - Scorpotron, said to be Scorponok ancestor, quoting Nova Prime during the Colony Wars.
002 The Long Journey, Part I
****Scavenger****
Log 004
I awoke, and thoughts filled my mind. I was annoyed as my vision filled with Cybertronian text, my boot log. I looked around, noticing that I was in some sort of metallic bed *stasis chamber*.
'I wonder what my current fuel level is?'
#Energon Reserves 100%#
'What?'
#Frame has been fully repaired, Weapons System online, Alt mode enabled, please seek a suitable form to scan.#
"What in the pit?"
#You have been fully repaired.#
I stood up from what was apparently a stasis chamber, and looked myself over. My armor had been painted green and pink, and it looked brand new. I looked for my shield and generic gun, and found the shield slightly bigger and heavier than before, and lacking in holes. My generic gun had been replaced by a custom design that fit my hands better, and was probably more potent.
It was pink and white, and looked like some sort of magical princess wand, but whatever.
"Boss? Sergeant? Captain? Anyone on the base?"
Silence.
That wasn't good. I looked myself over again, no symbols. Strange, shouldn't the old mech have painted me with the Cons symbol?
I walked to the door, it didn't open, so it wasn't automatic. I looked for a button to press, but found none, why I was locked here?
I deployed my tools, time to hack a door! Thankfully, I found a panel I could open, and it wasn't hard. Once the huge (for me) door opened, I looked for my Boss.
Yes, he was a Con. Yes I could have tried to run away. However, Cybertron was probably deader than Soundwave's sense of humor. Oh, and he had fixed me.
Me being a small femme, and it being a big ship, it took me a long time to explore it all, and I noticed that we were in space. It made me wonder how long I had been in stasis, and if there were others aboard the ship.
My answer came in the form of droids, and tons of them. They were about my size (and wasn't that scary?), and they patrolled the ship, doing various tasks.
When I finally found my Boss, I noticed my fuel efficiency had increased, somehow. He was in stasis, I wondered why.
#Energon Reserves 97% Remaining#
There was some sort of huge tablet *datapad* nearby, so I picked it up and looked for some information.
"Thousands of years of traveling? Are you yanking my crankcase?"
No wonder he had put the two of us in stasis. We were heading to some old abandoned colony, but this ship was so old it didn't have a faster than light engine.
'Why did I wake up early, then?'
#After being in stasis for ten months and being fully repaired, this unit will automatically begin to boot, unless that process is disabled.#
'Oh, that's awful convenient.'
****Scavenger****
Log 005
I had the whole ship for myself, and without having to fear enemies or worry about my energy levels for quite a long while, I had time to think for the first time since I became a Cybertronian.
'I can't use my human name anymore, it would be weird.'
#This unit has no name designation#
'I am basically a scavenger, why not use that?'
#This unit's designation is now Scavenger#
With that out the way, I explored the ship again. It took me a while to fully map it, several months in fact, as I had to take breaks, go to my room for recharges, and hack myself access to some places, plus the damn size difference.
#Map of the ship Designation Unknown completed#
With that done, I entered the ship database, my access to it was barely over the one the droids had, but at least I learned the ship's name.
#Update: Map of the ship Designation Unknown changed to Map of the ship Lone Star#
With that done, I went back into stasis, but of course I woke up ten months later.
I then went to the storage room where damaged droids were stored, there were only two of them, but it gave me the chance to experiment. After one of those experiments ended with one of the damaged droids exploding, I decided to try my luck with the ship database again.
It was a pain in the diode to create a makeshift scanner using spare parts and the leftover of the exploded droid, but once I got the Ship to use it to scan my Boss, who was still in stasis mode, and I got Administration access to the Lone Star database.
I used said access to both give myself temporary Administrator access and put a backdoor I could use later.
That done, I disassembled the evidence of my crime, and I used my temporary access to download the whole ship database into an unused computer that was probably more advanced than the whole ship. I made sure to erase any logs and other signs of my tampering with the ship systems afterwards.
The reason why I couldn't just have used my Boss's access to get the database directly? Call it paranoia, but I felt it was safer that way. Same reason I just didn't try to download the database directly into my processor, better be safe than sorry.
Then I used to computer to read the whole ship database. It took me a while, since the thing was just data and wasn't even indexed, lacking even the basic ship AI to help me. But after a few years, breaks included, I was done.
Most of the information was too old to be useful, but included in it was information about how ship and the droids worked, and several manuals on how to use and program both.
I wasn't a genius by any means, but my memory had improved extremely since I became a bot, and time literally was on my side.
I had limited resources, but energy was not a problem with only me out of stasis, so I decided to see how to improve the droids first, since it was less dangerous than screwing up the ship AI, and be forced to pilot it on manual for thousands of years.
I had failed to realize how long it would take to do that, or how complicated and advanced Cybertronian programing was.
****Scavenger****
Log 006
I remember asking Mary to get coffee together. We had a perfectly nice time, and bonded over 8-bit videogames we liked and how we both had a preference to eat sweet things when it rains. It slowly grew dark outside, but it didn't rain so we didn't eat anything really sweet. When we parted we agreed it was a truly wonderful time and any repeat would ruin it forever, so we decided to ignore each other for a while.
That was the last time I saw her because the first thing I remember after that was waking up as a darn Transformer!
I really miss her, I miss the tasty goddess that's an espresso. I miss chocolate cake with small pieces of chocolate inside it and white chocolate cover with cherries on top.
"Project droid time."
#It has been 56 years, 10 hours, 20 minutes and 12 seconds since you started this project.#
That was how long it took me to learn how to program a droid. Nevermind any improvements, it had took me that long to basically become a script kiddie in droid programing.
That was because Cybertronians didn't use a high level programing language, or at least my Boss didn't. Fifty-six years to learn how to use the assembler equivalent for Cybertronian droids.
And I was far from done, sure I could program droids to do things I wanted, but it was all using pre programed code. To make my own programing would be even harder.
No wonder it was so rare to see Transformers playing videogames, Cybertronian programing was torture! But then again, it is a race that can live millions of years, why hurry things?
'Because you ran out of fuel, you morons!'
But at least it keep me busy, it keep me focused, so I endured.
I performed repairs on the ship with the help of the droids, because apparently that was my job, and it protected my aft in case my hacking of the ship computer was discovered.
"Project droid time."
#It has been 84 years, 6 hours, 1 minute and 34 seconds since you started this project.#
After the equivalent of what would be a whole life for a human in Earth, in the late twentieth century at the very least, I had finally graduated from script kiddie to noob programer. I celebrated by making a few droids do the Macarena. Only one of them exploded, that's what I call progress!
"Project droid time."
#Hey Scavenger, it has been 127 years, 1 hour, 5 minutes and 50 seconds since you started this project.#
Yes, I had changed how my system addressed me slightly, at least it was way easier than the Pit damned droid programing. I had finally hit the limits of what I could do with droids without upgrading their hardware. But at least I got a few of them to talk, even if they didn't sound smarter than dumb Earth chatbots.
"Hey droids, who is the number one?"
"Loba Feroba is the number one, Birch!"
"Aye!"
"No way! The number one is the Bulk!"
"No, is Chistina from Gynoid Genius!"
Yes, I turned a few of the ship droids into chatbot nerds. They weren't smart conversationalists, but it helped me to keep me sane. And no, I didn't use the real names just in case there was some angry copyright God or something.
Yes it sounds stupid, but whatever. Try to stay sane alone in a ship for almost a hundred and thirty years.
"Project droid is completed."
#Wow Scavenger, you did it in less that two centuries, you are awesome!#
I drank low level artificial energon spiced with just a tad of iron powder and oil to celebrate. It tasted strangely pleasant, and didn't end up with me needing to be saved by one of the medical droids like in previous attempts to drink something that tasted different.
'Now what?'
*Ship programing, using the backup ship computer*
'I could try ship programing using the backup ship computer but first... "Hey droids, let's dance!"
I recreated a whole musical using myself and droids, it was "Hair". I hated it, but it was the only musical I fully remembered. Because while the memories I had from when I was human didn't get worse, they also didn't get better.
And yes, I did record it for posterity. My Boss thought I was a Junkion, so why not remind him of that by showing him the video when he finally got out from stasis? That way, it would help him to keep thinking I was at least raised on Junkion.
Afterwards, I went into stasis for ten months yet again. It hadn't made me any more sane, but it helped me to relax.
I planned to get started on my ship programing after I awoke, but that plan fell apart when the alarm sounded just a few minutes after I arose.
"Ship report, why is the alarm sounding?"
"We've got a breach in the hull at storage bay four."
'Damn, space pirates.'
"Droids, we are at war, take no prisoners!"
"Aye!"
"Yes maan!"
"Yes!"
"For the Queen and the blood!"
The droids didn't have weapons, but they did have tools capable of penetrating armor. I had coded in them the best way to quickly dealt with any Cybertronians, as long the enemy didn't react fast enough.
Unfortunately our intruders weren't Cybertronians.
'Fuck, why it has to be giant spiders?'
AN: Let's just say is a good thing my SI didn't end in Beast Wars.